


With Hands Held Out

by Asakiyume



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 23:09:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17334134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asakiyume/pseuds/Asakiyume
Summary: The Sea Girl in the Last Sea looks up from tending her fishes and sees Lucy Pevensie aboard theDawn Treader





	With Hands Held Out

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this, from "The Wonders of the Last Sea" in _The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_
>
>> _Suddenly she saw a little Sea Girl of about her own age in the middle of [the fishes]—a quiet, lonely-looking girl with a sort of crook in her hand. Lucy felt sure that this girl must be a shepherdess—or perhaps a fish-herdess—and that the shoal was really a flock at pasture. Both the fishes and the girl were quite close to the surface. And just as the girl, gliding in the shallow water, and Lucy, leaning over the bulwark, came opposite to one another, the girl looked up and stared straight into Lucy’s face. Neither could speak to the other and in a moment the Sea Girl dropped astern. But Lucy will never forget her face. It did not look frightened or angry like those of the other Sea People. Lucy had liked that girl and she felt certain the girl had liked her. In that one moment they had somehow become friends. There does not seem to be much chance of their meeting again in that world or any other. But if ever they do they will rush together with their hands held out._  
> 
> 
> That, and I have a deep fondness for seagrass and sea meadows, and the transition from a world of water to a world of air. 

“Come to the wargames,” my older brothers said, twisting their spears so the needlefish barbs and manta spines flashed in the sunlight, but I said no.

“Come along on the marlin hunt,” my older sister said. She offered to let me ride behind her on Fastest, her trusty bigeye steed, but I said no.

“Let Taiko mind the goatfish today,” my mother said, while behind her Taiko protested that he couldn’t possibly, that he wanted to ride behind our sister on the hunt if I wasn’t going to.

“No, I’ll mind them,” I told my mother. “I like to do it—it gives me time to think.” Taiko sent me a grateful look and swam off after our sister before our mother could find another task for him.

“You spend too much time alone,” my mother sighed. “No one needs to think that much.”

“I won’t be alone,” I said. “I’ll be surrounded by goatfish.” I didn’t mention the dugongs—that would only have distressed her more, because what kind of person wants to spend time with those strange, slow creatures who live in the world but aren’t of it, always pushing their faces through the Veil and into the hereafter?

A person like me. I’m that kind of person. That morning, I guided the goatfish through the meadows of slender turtlegrass and curling sickle leaf until we came to fields of tender paddleweed, up at the very tip-top of the world, where the Veil is so near that if I had had one of my brothers’ spears, I could have hurled it straight through. Maybe I could even hit the sun, which dwells somewhere up there in eternity.

If I did hit the sun, what would happen? Would it bleed? And if it did, would the drops fall through the Veil into the land of the living? 

Where the paddleweed grows, the dugongs feed. They never pay me or the goatfish any mind. I can swim right up to them and stroke their sides while they graze. Sometimes when they rise, I ask them what they see up there above the Veil. 

_Don’t ask such a thing,_ my mother would surely say, if she could hear me. _It’s bad luck. We’ll all find out what’s up there one day—may it be many, many years from now._ And she would wave both her hands behind her, to turn away illness and death.

That morning, it was as if my mother’s fear had infected the dugongs: no sooner had I asked the question than they pulled away, swimming off to the east. I was puzzled. The question had never bothered them before—why now?

Then I saw what had frightened them: a huge creature, approaching from the west, gliding just below the Veil, but—my heart threatened to burst the walls of my chest as I realized it—carrying the greater portion of its body above the Veil. In the eternal hereafter.

Was this Death embodied, coming for me? I hung in place, too terrified to turn and flee.

It drew nearer, and I could see forms moving on the creature’s great body. Did Death travel with attendants, like a shark with remoras? I strained to see clearly through the ripples of the Veil.

Everything became still around me, as if the current itself had ceased to flow, as I caught sight of a _person_ —alien looking, and yet not so very alien—within the folds of the creature’s huge flank. Only her upper body was visible, but I could see her face. It was the face of a girl like myself, looking down at me from eternity as I looked up at her. I say _from eternity,_ but she didn’t seem like an eternal being. She seemed alive in time, like me. With her chin resting in her cupped hands, she seemed like someone who wondered about things, like I do. Maybe right now she was wondering what lay below the Veil, just as I was wondering what lay above.

Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to talk to her, to ask her anything and everything, to tell her anything and everything. But the great creature that carried her was moving past me now, heading east—I could barely see her face anymore. For a brief moment I started swimming after her, but already she was too far away, and the goatfish swarmed me anxiously, fearful that my sudden movement meant trouble was near.

In all the years that have passed since that day, I have never seen anything like that again. The first few months, I drove my goatfish east and further east, trying to find some sign of the great creature that had passed by, with no luck. Later, I would beg any strangers I met to tell me if they had seen such a being, but they never had, and my questioning pained and worried my parents, so I gave it up. But the face of the girl from beyond the Veil has never left me—it’s as much a part of me as my heart or blood. Even though she and I shared only a moment, I feel we became friends. I doubt I’ll ever see her again in this life. Perhaps when I pass beyond the Veil—or when she does. But if we ever do meet, I know we’ll swim to one another with hands held out.


End file.
